After trying to treat his sore left knee with rest, the Boston Celtics and All-Star guard Kyrie Irving determined Friday that he will need to undergo what the team described as a "minimally invasive procedure" to alleviate irritation.
Following the procedure to remove the tension wire used to repair the fractured patella Irving suffered during the 2015 NBA Finals, the Celtics announced a timetable of 3-6 weeks for his return, meaning Irving won't likely be available for the start of the playoffs three weeks from Saturday. What does that mean for Irving and his team?
Boston locked into No. 2 seed
The good news for the Celtics is that they can afford to play without Irving the remainder of the regular season. At 49-23 after Friday's impressive road win over the Portland Trail Blazers, they were already unlikely to catch the Toronto Raptors for the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Meanwhile, Boston has a healthy six-game lead on the third-place Cleveland Cavaliers with 10 games to play.
As a result, the Celtics are as locked into their seed as any team in the league. Projections of the remainder of the season using ESPN's Basketball Power Index -- which are not adjusted for Irving's absence -- show Boston claiming the No. 2 seed 99 percent of the time.
The Celtics have also shown the ability to win without Irving during the regular season. Boston is 8-4 in the 12 games Irving has missed, although three of the best of those wins (against Oklahoma City, Portland and Toronto) have come by a single point. The last two wins came without three players who started on opening night: Irving, Jaylen Brown and Gordon Hayward, as well as sixth man Marcus Smart.
With Irving watching from the sidelines, the Celtics have struggled to score. Their offensive rating in the 12 games he's missed is 4.9 points per 100 possessions worse than what the opponents in those matchups have allowed over the course of the season, a rate similar to the NBA's last-place offense (the Phoenix Suns, 5.3 points per 100 possessions worse than average).
However, Boston has been able to improve on the league's best defensive rating in games Irving has missed. The Celtics are holding opponents 6.3 points per 100 possessions below their usual offensive rating, compared to 4.1 points per 100 possessions with Irving in the lineup.
Celtics will need Irving at full strength for postseason
Tough defense alone won't likely cut it for Boston in the playoffs. Accounting for the opposition and location of the games Irving has missed, the Celtics rate as slightly better than a .500 team in those 11 games despite their 8-4 record. Boston could perhaps win a first-round series against the seventh seed, but the level of competition will increase significantly by round two. If current seeding held, the Celtics would likely host the Cavaliers in a rematch of last year's Eastern Conference finals.
That means a tight timetable for Irving's recovery. The playoffs will start three weeks to the day from Irving's procedure on Saturday, with the second round potentially beginning as soon as two weeks after that.
There's also not a lot of precedent for a player of Irving's caliber returning during the midst of the playoffs after missing an extended period. The most recent would be Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors in 2016, though his MCL sprain was suffered during the playoffs, not the regular season. Same with Chris Bosh during the Miami Heat's 2012 championship run.
To find a star who was injured in the regular season and returned midway through his team's playoff run, we probably have to go back to Patrick Ewing with the 1998 New York Knicks. Ewing had been out since December when he came back for the last four games of the Knicks' second-round loss to the Indiana Pacers. (Irving's teammate Al Horford also might qualify, having come back during a 2012 first-round loss to Boston.)
As Curry can attest, it's not always easy to get back to 100 percent within the playoffs. But the good news for Irving is whatever issues he was experiencing with his knee didn't seem to slow down his production before he was sidelined. As recently as Feb. 28 against Charlotte, Irving had his third-best game of the season by game score (per Basketball-Reference.com), netting 34 points on 13-of-18 shooting. That's the kind of Kyrie the Celtics are going to need if they're to advance deep into the postseason.